ActionSA President, Herman Mashaba says a new publisher will take his book “The Outsider” to market at the end of June.
The book caused controversy after it was discovered that political analyst Prince Mashele had lied about Mashaba not funding it.
This led to the publisher, Jonathan Ball removing it from the market over a breach of trust.
However, Mashaba says there was nothing sinister about him giving Mashele R12 million to write his biography. Mashaba also reiterated that the contract was signed before forming ActionSA.
He explains, “I’m sure all of you are aware that the contract with Prince Mashele signed was on the 10thof March 2019. At the time I was the mayor of the City of Johannesburg. That’s almost 2 years before the establishment of ActionSA. I was serving as the Executive Mayor of the City of Johannesburg in October 2018, when Prince, who I knew from a distance, was one of my biggest critics. Round about October 2018, Prince approached me with a really brilliant proposal saying: Herman we have really been critical of you. I just really want to understand this animal called Herman Mashaba, the capitalist who we thought was the biggest joke to enter the political arena.”
Mashaba made these comments as the party unveiled former Democratic Alliance (DA) councillor and former Speaker in the Knysna local Municipality, Advocate Julie Anne Lopes as their new member.
Mashaba says the furore caused by the controversy was unnecessary.
“I’ve said this on many platforms and I am saying this to you that right now I am not taking things for granted. That Prince’s lawyers and my lawyers are making sure that I am not leaving anything out. One thing for sure is that I am really proud of the work that Prince did. We need to put his book out as a biography as originally planned and declare this to the publisher because the loan repayment as per our original arrangement was for it not to be coming from Prince, but directly from the publisher,” adds Mashaba.
